The Five People You Meet In Hell
by ParaCaerOuVoar
Summary: When you can't fight, what is there to stop you from falling?//DEAN, NO PAIRINGS
1. Chapter 1

OK, something new from me (Yeah, I know, I know)

The first chapter is gonna be short and slow, so please bear with me. By the way. If you're squeamish. Possibly not the best fic to read…

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Fire. Fire was the beginning and the end. Fire was birth, and death, and everything in between. Fire was warmth, and burning. Fire seared the flesh from his bones, and warmed him when there was nothing else. It consumed everything, and was everything he had ever known. Fire was all Dean Winchester knew, and remembered, and would ever know. The phoenix ends with fire, but is born from the ashes. Fire is a circle.

Everything in hell, the pain, the demons, the torture, it was fire that he despised the most. It was the fire that scalded his very soul, making him forget who he was, stripping him of his humanity. Turning him into a demon. They had started with knives, but he wouldn't break. Carving him into slivers, until he was a living skeleton, and then, when the demon, when _Alistair_ clicked his fingers, he was whole, and the agony started again. Alistair. Even the name made him shudder, sending shivers through him. Everything about him made Dean's skin, burned and scarred as it was, crawl. His eyes, obsidian black, bored into Dean. Again and again, he sliced him up, and again and again, he screamed for Sam until his voice was hoarse. But still, he carved, like Dean was a side of beef. Asking him the same question over and over again, every day. And every day, Dean told him to stick it up his ass. Why should today be any different?

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Alistair hummed as he ran his thumb across the knife blade, collecting a drop of blood. He brought his thumb to his mouth. 'I do hate to waste good food,' he drawled to the figure in chains. Dean hung there, limp. Today, Alistair had clicked his fingers, and his minions had appeared, big hulking men with hands like sledgehammers. They had beaten him until he could no longer stand defiant, sagging in his restraints. One eye was swollen shut, and he could no longer hear out of his right ear. A steady trickle of blood ran down his face, trying to blind the other eye. He rubbed his bruised face against an aching shoulder, clearing his vision. There was a dull throb in his hands, feet, right shoulder and left hip, where rusty, but still deadly sharp, hooks had pierced his flesh for the first time, over thirty years ago. He could hear the blood rushing around his body, the pain where they had broken each rib individually, constricting his lungs smaller each time he breathed raggedly. His kneecaps had been pulverized, and every time he shifted his weight, pain twinged around his entire body.

'So, what do you say Dean?' Dean shuddered at the sound of that voice, and immediately regretted it, the movement sending pain crackling up and down his shattered spine 'Fancy seeing life from the other side of the scalpel?'

Ever since the hell hounds had come for him, Dean had been able to see what demons really looked like. The backdrop of hell didn't make it any prettier. Alistair was tall, seven or eight feet, and thin, almost skeletal. The raw, cracked skin was stretched too tightly over the bones, peeling in some places, giving Dean a glimpse of pulsing muscle and yellowing bone. His eyes were black, from pupil outwards, just on the surface, and his hair was long and rank, hanging in strands. Puffy lips barely covered rotten teeth, and his face was covered in oozing sores. Dean smirked, ignoring the pain from his broken jaw. 'You're an ugly sonofabitch, aren't you?'

His face contorted at hearing Dean's remark, and he reached for his most used knife, the one with the crest carved into the handle, and, started at the hook in his right shoulder, began carving the skin from his body, filleting him calmly and efficiently. Dean screamed with hoarse lungs, screaming his brother's name, until no sound came out. He sliced small pieces at a time, until soon at his feet lay a heaped pile of bloody scraps, the remains of Dean's skin.

The demon pushed his face into Deans, breathing its fetid breath at him. 'What about now, Dean? Will you say yes now?'

'Never,' he rasped, his empty stomach heaving at the smell of rotten meat and death that emanated from this creature, this harbinger of death.

'I beg to differ,' he leered and thrust forward, his small, hooked blade piercing Dean's lungs. What little air he had gathered was lost in the stale heat as he gasped and writhed, the hooks tugging on his parched and cracked skin, suffocating slowly, watching the pleasure contorting Alistair's already deformed and hideous visage.

And suddenly, the fire returned, orange flames licking at his entire body, engulfing him. What skin that hadn't been sliced off crisped and burned, the muscles and bones charring and collapsing into dust. And still Dean felt the pain. Rags of skin and bone hung from the hooks, a skeletal Dean cowed and beaten, broken?

'Come on Dean,' whined the demon. 'As much as I love doing this, I need a protégé, someone for me to share the tricks of the trade with. That person will be you Dean. It's just a matter of time. So why not save yourself the pain, and say yes. Just one, little, miniscule, word…' He clicked his fingers, and Dean was whole again, gasping for breath he no longer needed, his skin fresh and pink, newly regrown. A trickle on blood ran from each hook, as it had in the beginning, on the first day on the rack. His head hung forward. He loathed himself for this weakness, but he couldn't do this anymore. He was a coward, taking the coward's way out. He was no better than the lowest of the low, worse than a _demon._

'Yes,'

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Just something I thought I'd throw out there. I would say enjoy, but it's not really enjoyable writing. You know what I mean.

Quick pimping!

_Fighting For Salvation, Fighting For Redemption,_ night-star-93. Brand new, but already AMAZING. Go, read!


	2. Chapter 2

I know, I should have updated this ages ago, but some other stuff kinda took over my brain (specifically They Live By The Sword). But hopefully, after a reshuffle of updating schedules, I'm back for good!

I own nothing. Not even the basic idea

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'_Yes.'_

Alistair clicked his fingers, and the chains vanished, the rusty hooks gone. Dean fell to his knees, gasping for air. For the first time in thirty years, he could breathe, really breathe. The air was stale and warm, but he didn't care. He gasped in lungfuls of it, regardless of the rusty taste.

'Ready to pick up the knife, m'boy?' Alistair asked, crouching next to him.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He loathed himself for doing this, even more than he hated Alistair for breaking him.

'Excellent,' he drawled, handing a knife over to Dean, the blade an onyx black that matched his eyes perfectly. The handle was silver and felt right in Dean's hand. As a knife it was nothing special. Sharp, well balanced, clean. But so were Dean's knives back on Earth. As an instrument of hell, it thrummed with so much power Dean felt it down in the very depths of his soul. The knife seemed to calm him, make him forget how much he despised himself. A slow smile spread across his lips as he twisted the knife into a new grip, more comfortable.

Alistair, seeing the smile, grinned a smirk of his own, stretching the rotten skin over his yellowing bones even tighter. They both stood up as equals, instead of tortured and torturer, and Alistair raised his voice, calling for the first soul.

Ebony coloured hair hung lank across her face as the hooks seared into her flesh, at the shoulder and hip, like Dean's, but she didn't utter a word. Lifeless violet eyes rose up to meet Dean's, and he took a step backwards as her eyes widened. 'Dean...' she whispered, hoarse.

He swallowed, the hatred rising back up, like bile. He turned to Alistair, who still smirked. 'You did this on purpose. You slimy, worthless demonic son of a bitch!' He bellowed the last word and the chains hanging around them shook with the force of it.

'I had to test you straight away son, to make sure you meant it. If you want, I can click my fingers and you'll be back on the rack.' He raised his hand and Dean shook his head, readjusting the grip on his knife.

'No, I'll, I'll do it.' He took a deep breath and gripped the knife again, the sheen of sweat on his palm sliding across the cool metal. Approaching the rack, he looked everywhere but her eyes, not trusting himself not to lose it if he looked into those orbs, the fear and hopelessness he knew had been reflected in his own eyes only hours ago.

'No, Dean, please, it's me...' she tried again, before he blocked her voice out, closing his eyes and calling up some long forgotten rock song from the dregs of his human memories. He hummed along to Blue Oyster Cult as he raised his knife and began to skin the woman in front of him, like Alistair had skinned him. He turned the music in his head up as her screaming got louder, but he couldn't disguise the feeling of her pulsing flesh beneath his working hands. The muscles writhed and spasmed as red painted his hands, spreading up his wrists and forearms.

The blood was warm and fresh, a salty tang rising up from it and into Dean's nose. It smelt good, he realised with faint horror, but the knife hummed again and quashed the revulsion. Now that the realisation that this was a living, breathing human soul was there, Dean's found it easier to ignore. The pitiful shrieking keened over the music in his head until he couldn't ignore it anymore and he lashed out, his right hand connecting with her raw cheek. 'SHUT UP!' he roared, she did. Well, she stopped screaming, instead whimpering every time the knife touched her skin. He worked his way over her scalp, down across her once flawless and English rose complexioned face, sweeping past her shoulders and down her back, arching in pain, skinning her perfectly toned legs and finishing at her small, elfin feet. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, like a wild horse and she fought her bindings, spasming in pain.

Behind him, he heard a slow clap, and he turned, a feral look in his eyes, scarlet blood spattered across his handsome features to see Alistair, practically splitting his face in half that a shit-eating grin, lazily slapping his hands together in a slow clap. 'Excellent work, Winchester. Almost textbook, the way you used that knife. I do love an eager student. Let me show you where you're going wrong.'

Dean surrendered the knife to his new teacher and watched with interest as he clicked his fingers and she was whole again, her eyes boring through Dean, no longer filled with hurt, just pain and betrayal towards him.

And slowly, as Alistair instructed him on the proper way to hold the knife so as to remove the skin in one large piece, he felt his disgust and self loathing wash away to be replaced by interest, and eagerness to try. He took to torture the way he'd taken to hunting. With gusto and raw skill.

Later, he guessed at the end of the day, Alistair vanished, one last click echoing through the room as the woman's skin regrew again, leaving her standing whole, her breathing ragged, but her spirit unbroken. They were all like that the first day, hoping that if they could get through the first day, they'd be alright. Dean knew, Dean had lived through it. It didn't get easier. It got so much harder.

He approached her slowly, discarding the knife on the table.

Softly, he said just one word, as the last of his humanity fell away. As he had been skinning her, he had also been skinning himself of his humanity, his soul. He was no better than Alistair now, but the difference between him and the old Dean? The old Dean would have cared.

The new Dean just crouched in front of the woman and caught a tear with the pad of his thumb, tasting the salt and pain. He spoke to her gently, just one word that brought back a flood of memories.

'Addison...'

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OK, I was gonna try and cover one chapter for one person, but I think Addison'll get two, and everyone else'll get one. Which means this fic should only be six chapters long. Let's see how long it REALLY ends up being.


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